Since the invention of the guitar, people have "traded licks", the internet simply provides a larger forum for doing this. Most tabs I have seen on the internet are merely an interpretation of the piece, and are usually incomplete, or take a note form

Personally, I think that the MPA feel that they have missed a trick. They are certainally playing the bully-boy tactics suggesting jail terms for offenders.

If this does come into force, then it is possible that even excellent resources such as this one might be at risk.

Yeah. Taborama is down. Supposedly ultimate-guitar won't get shut down because it's from Russia.

The record companies are just pissed off because they're fighting a loosing battle against P2P sharing. That's what it's really about.

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The Music Publishers Association and the RIAA are two entirely different entities. Usually, the artist who wrote the song own's the publishing rights to it, unless they sell them to a Publishing company. This group protects the owners of the publishng rights, not the record companies.

Besides, can you really see a bunch of Record Execs meeting up and being like "If they don't stop illegal filesharing, I'll shut down their precious TAB SITES!! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!"

I think it's funny that they're shutting down TAB sites when p2p software is right there. You want to ask, "Hey, guys, are you missing something?" If they did shut down all the TAB sites everyone could just move right to p2p.

is that why mxtabs is down? I read this thread and didn't think anything would happen so quickly then got really frustrated that it didn't work... basstabarchive and bassmasta both work, but they're kind of inferior.

I think they've just taken down their site volintarily so that they don't get the supposed 'jail time'. I think they'll be back up pretty soon.

Powertabs is still up, but you can only download user compositions. This might be a good time to download all the guitarpros I may want in the future, but I can't be bothered. I'd rather just complain.

I really liked Powertabs I am really sad they are gone. I know a lot of people are saying don't use tab, transcribe instead. But transcribing takes a lot of work and sometimes you just want to learn a cool song you like that normally would take days to transcribe. If it wasn't for tab I would have given up on bass long ago (being able to play songs you like quickly and painlessly was a nice thing). I also learned a lot about music theory and how bass interacted with guitar from powertabs. Now I guess I am going to have to transcribe the guitar part and the bass part in order to do what I could do quickly at glance. Powertabs also helped me be able to look at basslines for many different styles of music. I highly doubt I'll ever be able to study the basslines for Death Metal songs again (there is no way I can listen to a Death Metal song enough to transcribe it). Tabs were a big part of my development as a bassist since I didn't have a teacher. I guess it is good in a way that they are gone... now I'll be forced to transcribe everything (not to say I didn't transcribe things before). It is going to be a pain though.

Darn capitalists. I'll bet Tom Morello is organizing a protest right now.
So hypothetically, if I was looking for some powertabs (white stripes- seven nation army, blues brothers, creem, rush and gospel stuff) where woud I look?